How to Turn Any Glasses into Google Glass

By many accounts, Google's new wearable tech device, Glass, has a lot going for it. Sure it's ridiculously expensive, poses any number of profound ethical concerns, and makes whoever wears it look like an extra from Universal Soldier. But it also promises to bring augmented reality technology into the mainstream. In doing so, it could help us overcome the many creative and cultural limitations we've taken as a given throughout the smartphone generation.

There's just one problem, however. Ok, maybe more than one. But the one that really matters for the post-iPhone-and-iPad world is an aesthetic challenge: Google Glass still looks really weird. Even seasoned tech journalists feel like "Glassholes" when they wear a pair.

Google has started to improve upon this problem with increasingly stylish frames like the four new models it introduced in its "titanium collection" back in January. But even then, Google's answer to its aesthetic problem highlighted the continued challenge that tech companies face when entering into the realm of fashion. As one of the lead designers on the project explained to The Verge, the Glass team aggregated "thousands of styles" and distilled them into several broad groups.

That's a legitimate approach when it comes to designing something like a smartphone or a laptop. But something you wear on your face warrants a much greater degree of personalization.

That's why I was so impressed when I stumbled upon this post on the Designer of Things blog that offered another solution so simple and easy that it's profound: just attach Google Glass to your own pair of glasses.

Using a small plastic clip that can be made in under an hour with a basic 3D printer, the adapter is essentially a clip for the computer part of Glass. Actually, it's not essentially a clip. It is as clip. Here's how Designer of Things describes it:

A 3D printed plastic adapter is all you need to clamp Glass onto your pair of Glasses. The adapter will cost you under a dollar. To create the adapter you’ll need a 3D printer and the files for the adapter unit which you can find over on the creators, Noe & Pedro, Adafruit Learning System page. The clip should take no more than half an hour to print.

To attach it to Google Glass you will need to remove the lens-free band that comes with Glass first. Using a T5 screwdriver, all you need to do is loosen the screw found where your right temple would be on Glass and then gently pull the frame from the actual device.

Obviously you'd need to have access to a 3D printer to make this work. But if you do, as TechCrunch points out, the whole thing will only run you about a dollar. That's a lot less than the $250 Google is charging for its frames.

Still, if you're willing to fork over $1,500 for Glass itself, I don't think money is your chief concern. And a plastic clip doesn't exactly conceal the fact that you have a computer on your face. But it's a good start. What's promising here is that the so-called "maker movement" is doing exactly what all of its evangelists keep insisting it's so good at: offering a cheap and easily available solution to a problem that giant tech companies like Google can't figure out quite as easily.